Raw Caramel Apples

apples awaiting their caramelly fate

Whew, mini camera emergency. I was taking a million pictures of these beautiful little apples, I stuck the sticks into them, and was taking a bunch more pictures, and poof! "Battery exhausted." Why does it get exhausted? I feel like that's a weird way to put it and I have that thought every time it happens. After a moment of panic and more than a couple of moments rummaging through boxes, I found the cord to charge the camera. Whew, crisis averted. Onto making some caramel apples. Raw caramel apples free of refined sugar! That may not sound great to you, but for those in the know, they know that dates make an amaaazing caramel sauce. And also, you don't have to cook date caramel! Now, caramel is one of my all-time favorite things, don't get me wrong, but usually it's sticky, makes a mess, and takes quite a long while. Not this time. Super quick and only uses one kitchen tool-- a food processor. You can also do this with a blender, just take a little more time, add a little more water, and scrape down the sides a lot. This is where I got to put into play my birthday present! It was my birthday on Saturday.

vegan oreo cake from Whole Foods!

I had a fun day hanging out with family, going swimming-- an all time dream of mine, to go swimming on my birthday!-- and eating some delicious beans my honey cooked, along with some homemade tortillas-- recipe for those coming later.

Homemade tortillas and Sam's amazing beans

pretty peppers, while Sam was chopping veggies to make the beans

Anyway, my father-in-law got me the most thoughtful gift! A Ninja Kitchen System. It's awesome. So far, it whips out a mean pumpkin spice tea coconut oil latte,

yummy coconut oil pumpkin spice latte-- just blend a tablespoon of coconut oil with a strong cup of pumpkin  spice tea until creamy... so yum

.... and makes the best banana ice cream ice ever had. 
 

so good

yum! check out how creamy that is!

It can also make this delicious caramel sauce. As I am typing this, I'm attempting to get the last bit of caramel out of the mug I dipped the apples in. I've already had to wash my face and hands once. It's delicious.

Date Caramel

1 cup dates
1 tablespoon peanut butter (raw if you want to keep things raw)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup water/non-dairy milk
apples on sticks (I used kabob sticks because that's all I could find--you'd think the stores would have sticks right by the apples this time of year, but not that I saw)
other yummy toppings, if desired-- chocolate chips, nuts, etc.

Whir together in a food processor until a smooth paste is formed-- a couple of minutes. Scoop out into a bowl (or large mug) and dunk your apples in. Coat in extra yummies if you want. I'm kind of a caramel apple purist, but other toppings are good too, sometimes.

swirly caramel goodness

 

Birthday Cake!

My birthday was last Friday and my sweet, sweet husband got me a vegan cake! He called everywhere in town, and guess what? There is not a single slice of vegan cake being sold anywhere in or near Wichita Falls, Texas. One bakery, Margie's Sweet Shop, is actually testing recipes and should have a vegan option in the next six months-- so, "yay!" for my next birthday, if we're still here then. Anyway, the only other option for purchasing a bakery cake was to get it shipped, which turns out is really expensive. Sooo... my dear, creative husband paid one of his classmates to make one! (Thank you, Jessi!) It was delicious, and made even more delicious by the fact that it was a surprise and that I didn't have to make it myself! I love cooking, but I make almost every morsel that goes in my mouth, and I love getting a break. So thank hubby, for a great day and for such a wonderful surprise!

I also got an air popper (I've been having popcorn almost every day, yum!) and a cherry pitter (I haven't had a chance to get to the store to buy cherries yet.... so that one's waiting to be used), and a target gift card (woohoo!), and various monies from parents and grandparents (thanks guys!).

On a different note, my camera died the other day. It most of the time now will only take insanely overexposed pictures, so pics on the blog for now will probably be ipod or phone quality, but I hope to get a new one at some point!

Carrot-Cake Muffins with Molasses Buttercream

Just look at these. The bits of raisin and carrot, the crystallized sugar on top, the swirl of caramel-y molasses buttercream. Wow, they're good. And perfect for ushering in the fall. Nights are starting to cool down (which for us means getting down to 80 every now and then) and bugs are making their merry little way into the house (not the best harbinger of fall). Soon, we'll be able to wear jackets and snuggle up on our couches with mugs of hot tea. Maybe it's not blazing hot where you live and you already do this. Either way, these carrot-cake muffins are delicious.

The recipe for the muffins is from Simple Vegan!, which was in a giveaway package I won from Your Vegan Mom. She even wrote about this recipe here! I think this is the first thing I've made from here, and if it's any indication of the rest of the recipes, I'll be making more! It was already pretty healthy, so I didn't feel like I needed to substitute anything. This book seems like it's filled with really simple (hence the name), relatively healthy recipes. The only negative I'd give it so far is that it's so simple in terms of vegan knowledge-- for example, in one of the asides it mentions that the only chocolate vegans can eat is some kinds of dark chocolate. No mention of all the lovely vegan products out there that are milk or white! I think this could be off-putting to old vegans who know better or new vegans who might feel more restricted than they need to. We have lots of options, new vegans!

Besides that, it looks like a really good resource and was published by the folks at Good Housekeeping, which means both that the recipes have been extensively tested by vegans and non-vegans, and that vegan eating is continuing to make it's way into the mainstream-- two very awesome things! The buttercream is my own recipe, and it is flipping delicious if I do say so myself. Which I do. Now, after all of that chatter, on to the recipes!

Carrot-Cake Muffins
makes 6

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup quick oats (I think regular old-fashioned would work well too)
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (recipe follows if you don't have it)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup plus 2 T almond milk (or other non-dairy milk)
• 2 T unsweetened applesauce
• 1 1/2 T vegetable oil
• 1 tsp molasses
• 1 cup shredded carrot  (mine was 1 large carrot)
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 3 tsps coarse sugar (the stuff I have is from Wilton)

Directions

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
•  I almost always halve muffin and cupcake recipes, so my version makes 6. Mix all of the dry ingredients in one bowl-- from the beginning of the list through the sugar.
• Mix wet ingredients in another bowl-- the almond milk, applesauce, vegetable oil, and molasses. The original recipe calls for brown sugar but I was out and adding the molasses here gives a brown sugar taste!
• Mix the 2 bowls together and fold in the raisins and carrots. The optional walnuts would be lovely but I didn't have any. If you do, fold in 2 T here.
• Fill your muffin cups (I used liners for easier portability and less cleanup!). They will be pretty darn full.
• Top with the coarse sugar. You can use regular sugar or just omit it, but the coarse kind really gives it that bakery/coffee shop feel. And don't we all like to feel fancy, even at home?
• Bake for about 25 minutes.
• Eat plain, with a bit of non-dairy margarine, or with my molasses buttercream!

For one of 6: cals: 188kcal | fat: 4.61g | carbs: 34.83g | prot: 2.86g


Pumpkin Pie Spice

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 4 teaspoons ground nutmeg
• 4 teaspoons ground ginger
• 3 teaspoons ground allspice

Directions

• I didn't have any pumpkin pie spice (you can tell I didn't plan on making these muffins, no?) but I had all of the ingredients to make it. I used this recipe and it turned out beautifully! Just put everything in a small jar and shake it up. Then it's ready to use in your muffins, plus extra for pie or oatmeal later!

 Molasses Buttercream

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup of your favorite margarine
• 1 tsp molasses
• 1-2 cups powdered sugar

Directions

• Beat the margarine and molasses together with an electric mixer.
• Slowly add the sugar in, mixing after each addition, until your desired consistency is reached. Mine never got as thick as a normal buttercream-- I think the liquid in the molasses changed things up a bit, but just pop it in the fridge and it'll firm up!
• Spread on everything and eat with a spoon (I won't judge, I did).

For 2 T. Based on using 1.5 cups sugar: cals: 115kcal | fat: 2.52g | carbs: 23.07g | prot: 0.00g


And since this post didn't have very many pictures, I'll leave you with this one. This is March, one of the kitties we rescued a few months ago. I wrote about them in this post. He's normally very reserved but he loves posing for the camera-- this is his "fierce" pose. Cracks me up every time I see it. I'll be sure to put up pics of the other two soon!

Vanilla Chocolate Rose Cake Tutorial

I am so proud of this little cake. I'd never made a layer cake before (well there was one awful attempt a year ago on Valentine's). Anyway, this recipe was my inspiration, which led me to I Am Baker blog, which I am now obsessed with. I Am Baker isn't a vegan blog, but it's full of creative and beautiful baking ideas and a lot of these awesome ideas can be veganized. I thought I'd share my favorite chocolate cake and buttercream recipes and do a tutorial on how to build a layer cake. Besides being my first layer cake, this is also my first tutorial... Here goes!

Chocolate Cake

This cake recipe is my favorite. I've cut it down and adapted it from this recipe at FatFree Vegan- my favorite vegan blog and the first one I read! The cake is really moist and yummy and a bit denser than a regular cake, but with chocolate, that just makes it better! It's really easy, since there's no sifting or mixing with an electric mixer and everything can go in one bowl. This recipe makes 1 6-inch cake or 11 cupcakes or 32 mini ones-- with all of the changes I've made to the original, I need to tweak it so it's just a bit more to get that 12th cupcake and those thirds-of-teaspoons worked out. I hope you enjoy it anyway!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder (I use Hershey's, 2 T regular and 1 T dark)
• 2/3 tsp baking powder (I use 2 rounded 1/4 teaspoons)
• 1/3 tsp salt (again, a rounded 1/4 tsp)
• 1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1.5 tbsp canola oil
• 2 tsps white or apple cider vinegar mixed with 2/3 cup water

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 F. Put the first 5 ingredients in a bowl and use a fork or a whisk to mix

2. Then add the rest of the ingredients and stir to incorporate, but don't over mix-- a few lumps are ok.

3. Then use some shortening or margarine and your fingers to coat your pan and then dust it with cocoa powder-- this makes sure that the cake doesn't stick after it's cooked.

4. Pour the batter into your prepared pan.

5. Bake for roughly 37 minutes (that's what mine took). Set the timer for about 25 minutes and then check in intervals until a toothpick comes out clean.

6. When I took my cake out of the oven , while it was still warm, I used a clean towel to press down the middle where it had puffed up. This will make your cake even for stacking, but it will also make it denser, so if you don't want that, don't press it down and even off the top when it's cooled. Next time I think I'll not press down and I'll just slice off the top once it's cooled. And I'll also cool it for an hour or so, remove from the pan, and then finish cooling in the fridge, rather than put the whole pan in the fridge-- I think that might have affected the cake's texture as it was different this time than usual.

7. That's it for the cake. Now on to frosting!

Per one cupcake out of 11 cals: 94kcal | fat: 2.05g | carbs: 19.06g | prot: 1.36g

Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients:

• 1 pound powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup shortening
• 1/3 cup margarine (Earth Balance recommended, since it's stiffer than some other vegan margarines available)
• 3-4 tbsp water

Directions:

1. Measure out your shortening and margarine into a bowl (or loaf pan in my case).
2. Add a couple of cups of powdered sugar and start beating with an electric mixer.
3. As your frosting starts to come together, add a little water, then a bit more powdered sugar, until a really thick, smooth consistency is reached. It'll look like this:

Filling

For the filling I smooshed up 7 golden oreos and mixed them with about 1/4 cup of the frosting. The next morning when I went to assemble the cake I had to add about a tablespoon of water to the mixture before filling the cake because it had hardened.

Assembling

Alright, now back away from your cake and frosting. Cover everything (again, I would remove the cake from the pan next time--  I dusted it with cocoa powder when I removed it to keep it from sticking to anything). Put it all in the fridge and step back. Preferably overnight or at least a couple of hours. You might think you'll die of anticipation, but I'm pretty sure you won't. I almost broke down and got everything back out at 11pm but thankfully, I was worried I'd be so tired it would be ugly, so I resisted. This is what went wrong on my first horrible attempt at a layer cake-- not the tired part, the not waiting part. Not everything was cooled enough and it was a huge, sticky, slidey, sugary mess. I should see if I can find a picture of it somewhere. It was really bad (but still tasty).

Anyway, so whenever your cake and frosting have cooled, you're ready to start assembling. Take all of your parts out of the fridge, like so:

1. Cut your cake in half. I just got out a big knife and stood the cake up on it's edge and eyeballed it. I'm sure there are better ways to do this.

2. Mix a little water with your filling if it's dry and then put in on your bottom layer, not going quite all the way to the edges, like this 

 

 3. Put your top layer on top of the filling.

 4. Frost the whole cake, trying to cover any cake underneath, to  give you a clean smooth surface to decorate.

5. Then snip off the end of your pastry bag, slip your large star tip in, and fill it up with frosting.

6. Starting on the sides, and starting in the middle of a rose, swirl around until you fill the side of the cake. Make sense? No? Well then, follow the amazing tutorial over at I Am Baker. I really love that blog!

7. Finish up your roses in the middle of the top and step back to admire your creation. Slice into your masterpiece and enjoy!

I made this into 10 slices instead of 8 since it's so rich and sugary. So...

1/10 of cake including frosting and filling: cals: 367kcal | fat: 14.37g | carbs: 60.54g | prot: 1.73g

It's intense, but yum. I'm totally having a slice for breakfast as I type this. Probably not best idea ever, but probably also not the worst. Have a beautiful day!